In The Sound and the Fury, Caddy is both the central character and the chapter-less character. In this series of activities (pick and choose or do them all), we will use DY to help us deepen our understanding of Caddy’s world.
This is DY at its best: the tools here can help us question what we know about Caddy, how we learn it, and will raise the question: do we really know anything about her? DY can help us think about Caddy in ways we have not before.
Teaching Tip: You can do the following exercises with any central female character, such as Minnie from “Dry September” or Emily from “A Rose for Emily”.
Using the graph extrapolated from DY data, we can see that Caddy is never alone in the novel.
This raises the questions:
This graph shows how often characters are present or mentioned in the same event. A red line () between two blue boxes () shows at least one interaction, and a thicker line indicates multiple interactions. Characters with more connections are closer to the center, but, importantly, the position of characters are not fixed.
Characters who appear close together in one graph may appear far apart in another. The graph is interactive, so you can click on a character’s name to see their connections. You can also click and drag characters to reposition them.
We can get a better picture of Caddy’s relationships by mapping with whom she spends the most time.
The Character-Character Force Directed graph shows which characters interact and how often. A red line () between two blue boxes () shows at least one interaction, and a thicker line indicates multiple interactions.
Let’s assume that Caddy is most likely to be friends with other White, upper-class, females. We can map out this social network in The Sound and the Fury by selecting these parameters:
Reminder: The thickness of the lines indicates how often these characters are together.
This one is a bit overwhelming, but try to find the Caddy Compson square, and click on the blue box (node) to show all of her connections.
Tip: Characters with more connections tend to be closer to the center. You can zoom in and out with the and buttons.
The MapIt tool allows users to display all of the events or characters that meet specific criteria. In this instance, we will use it to show all of the events in which a specific character occurs.
As a class, perform the above search and MapIt function for Benjy. You will see that Benjy’s movements in the story are confined and limited. As we know, Benjy is limited emotionally and confined physically.
Compare Caddy’s locations in The Sound and the Fury and “The Appendix”.
Consider the following questions:
Each event in Digital Yoknapatawpha has been labeled with a different narrative status that indicates how that event is related to the reader.
The chart on the right breaks down the narrative status of each event by character. It demonstrates what percentage of events about a character are narrated, told, and remembered.
